I'm thinking of throwing a small (single slot only!) nvidia card into my rig for a little bit so I can see the difference PhysX makes. My 5870 will be the main GPU and I'll run strictly PhysX from the card (or however the hybrid thing works).

Do you think a 9500 GT will be enough to do the PhysX calculations (unless hybriding allows the ATI to do it). I don't want to spend any more than $100 since I'll be just briefly using it while playing Arkham asylum and then just keeping it out of the case as a spare GPU when checking friends systems or if my 5870 blows....

Your input is always appreciated, thanks again everyone.

PS: Looked at used ones and am wondering did anyone other than XFX use black PCBs in this period? There are a lot of ugly greens and reds out there lol

Be aware that nVidia drivers will disable PhysX on their cards if they detect an ATI GPU in the system. There are driver hacks to get around that limitation, but do your research first and make sure that you are able to get it working for sure before you actually go and buy anything.

As for what card you should use, I would say you want a 9600GSO/GT 240 or better. If I remember correctly, the minimum requirement for PhysX is 32 SPs, which means to actually get very good performance, you'll want something better than that.

I put together this thread: HD5870 with 8800GTS for PhysX Although NVIDIA messed up their drivers a few weeks ago and forgot to block PhysX with ATI, so if you can get your hands on those, you won't need to do any hacking from the sounds of it.

I think you'd definitely want something more than a 9500GT. Going with current generation, I'd say GT240 minimum, and of yesteryear, 8800 series and 9800 series. The GTX series of cards are rather expensive for purely PhysX.

jdrom: It was actually your thread that first got me interested in the idea, and I later caught the thread about the one driver version that accidently allowed ATI and PhysX. I haven't read the threads after the first couple posts in a while so I'll have to do a bit of review before I get started, but from what I recall it didn't seem that difficult.

I also want to have a spare card laying around, (though not my 4890 Vapor-x I have for sale, that's going towards the vertex RAID fund :) so I thought it would be nice to have an nVidia card as well so I have at least a little experience with their camp (plus I'm thinking of doing a little mitx project so a physx nvidia card will be more than what I need).

Belgolas: Oh really :D I'll have to take a look at that thread quick before they get snatched. Thanks for the heads up

IIRC some engines can be 'forced/tricked' to using some PhysX or PhysX like effects with custom configurations. Can't for the life of me remember any off the top of my head and how indepth the effects were, but maybe LFD is one of those games? Linus is definitely right on it not normally being PhysX though.